How to Read a WikiLeaked Document

Having been in Afghanistan with Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines last August, Wired reporter Noah Shachtman found that the full picture of that time is missing from the intra-military communication leaked by WikiLeaks. Shachtman explains how a reader should interpret the supposedly raw, unvarnished documents.

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Comments [8]

martia

How to Read a Wikileaked Document reported july 30 2010. This report was basically talking about how military communication was leaked onto a website. This information was released to inform, when in actuality the documents don't display a correct interpretation of what is really happening.I think people are so concerned with what's happening in Afghanistan, If we did know the truth about it we would all live in fear. Plus the government isn't going to tell us everything anyways.On the other hand people do deserve to hear to the truth or what the government tries to feed us as the truth.In all this report was sort of informative. It basically revealed how crazy our government is.

these military documents are meant to be read by military for use in important situations. they don't need to tell the whole story like they are intended for the public. this is a matter of national security and it should stay filled with gaps to protect the country, the soldiers, and anybody els involved because this obviously isn't secure.

Withholding information is really media's stock in trade. It took Uncle Walter an awfully long time to see the futility of fighting Vietnam, which didn't have nuclear weapons, and didn't have the support of China, which did. Meanwhile, Pakistan does and has almost as a weak government as Afghanistan and even less so since the tragic floods and its abdication to the Taliban in relief efforts.

Even if thirst for revenge against Bin Laden or your moral outrage argument don't work on moving average war-fatigued Americans, simple self-preservation should keep their minds focused on those nukes. Remember, A. Q. Khan, was his name? Is his name? He's still there, too.

njI think it is because upstart and irresponsible Wikileaks which is new media scooped the big time media and their overpaid undies are in a jealous bunch over it because its their job to damage the war effort. BTW....it's a nice touch drawing an offensive moral equivalence between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which has kept Western Europe free for forty years and the Quest for Fire extras of the Taliban who had their contribution to civilization featured on the cover of Time magazine recently.

I understand why the US government would be upset with Wikileaks. What I don't understand is why people in the media are and why there has been more outrage directed at them than NATO or the Taliban/AL Qaeda who are actually at war - that is; killing people.

Give that man a Pulitzer! You mean to say that second lieutenants don't write journalist quality reports? Are you telling me the logs written by soldiers fighting a war mostly describe battles rather than the clumsy incidents of school-building and helping old ladies cross the street which don't accomplish anything except maybe fooling gullible embedded reporters who have bought into the counterinsurgency scam? (Shachtman's totally wrong, by the way. That garbage does show up in the logs, where it's treated as a joke and a waste of time by the poor slobs who have to go through the COIN motions.)

Thank you Noah. I would never have known that each word in every War Diaries log isn't 100% accurate, if you hadn't explained it. From now on all important leaks relating to the war should go directly to Wired so its experts and embedded reporters can responsibly analyze the documents and explain them to the public, military priorities permitting.